


zelda's awakening

by windbellows



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, One Shot, there's not a lot of like romance in action here but it's meant to be viewed with a zelink lense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29614395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windbellows/pseuds/windbellows
Summary: Of the scholar, and her secret study.
Relationships: Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	zelda's awakening

**Author's Note:**

> happy 35th anniversary legend of zelda!!!!!!!!!!

In a hundred years, the light will fall through the disused windows across rows of full-to-bursting shelves, of books snuck from the library on old languages and theory and technology that haven’t been read in some time and the light will catch the dust of the study, and on the books’ spines. 

But Zelda, who keeps her window shut to stop any chances of someone peering into her study, and to keep the light from her eyes, isn’t there at the moment. These books show signs of rereading, over and over and over. Zelda’s personal notes stick out in lieu of bookmarks and bookmarks stick out because she was able to find them under the mass of journals and papers on her desk (and the one clear space where she writes, and draws, and thinks of worlds ages before hers). Potted plants, flowers that don’t need light to survive, sit where there’s room. Floral care isn’t her thing and she forgets to water but Link manages to salvage them.

From the volumes she’s found after nights of tapping on library shelves, listening to any tell-tale sounds of a hidden portion behind it, to the sketches tacked on the walls of Guardians and wildflowers and shrines from different angles, the door had literally opened for her and she had walked in, and thanked whoever opened it - her study is built from the ground up. Inviting Link in was just an invitation, really, but no one else aside from Zelda had been in there before, in the space that was hers and hers alone. 

In a hundred years Link will salvage what he can from this room because he doesn’t know what’ll happen when he confronts the top of the castle but surely, Zelda would want to see her work saved - right?

And the books show signs of love, where fingers have traced down sentences and art, and notes on the pages that Zelda has to read with a magnifying glass, and her own that she sticks into the crease between pages, numbered by which order they come into context with the text. Some of the small notes are in her Hylian, and some are in old Hylian and some are in Sheikah and some are in in a language she doesn’t recognize and can’t translate, but it doesn’t matter because here is someone who, whether long ago or just yesterday, felt the same passion, the same devotion. She wonders - just who wrote this small? Is it a certain code? Fairies? The princess in the lookout tower is an inheritor, and when she scribbles down her notes she is a successor of the scholars before her, and she is a scholar coming into her own right. Behind the locked doors of her study, Zelda blossoms, as best as she can. 

A petal falls from the blue-white flower, and lands on the windowsill, and blows away. It tosses and tumbles on the wind, past hill and lake and tower, and it passes by dust and leaves and seeds spread by the tree children, and it floats past the edge of Hyrule, past the mist at the bottom of the gorge and towards what lies beyond, but before that, it passes over the crumbling columns, signifiers of an earlier time, a past before the past. The world has ended here many times. Still, we live on. The seeds fall. 

The ruins capture memory. A ways down from the shrine lies a golden recollection, of a different day than the one at the shrine, with better feelings this time. The young scholar crouches here and there, sketching in her journal pictures of the columns, and the way the light falls on their grooves, and the carvings in their stone of birds. Her knight sits near her, ever watchful but also resting, the sliver of a smile on his face. 

Unbeknownst to the two of them, these birds fly on her very own crest, their wings splayed in flight. But there they’re splintered, lifeless, too sharp and too cold. Zelda taps her pen against her chin and wonders to herself if these birds were revered for they were carved with such _care_ and in the dust of the ruins, caught in the light, she can almost hear a voice sing back an answer. It sings a hundred years later still, and has been singing for far longer:

_They were, and they were great and kind and they were loved, they were loved._

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!


End file.
